Jaybeyii

Willard Wonka needs a dark side - the feel of Dahl's worldview. In this imagining he's only as sweet and magical as his candy. His drive to excel isn't a matter of revenge or a twisted childhood, but a desire to be as good as his mom believed him to be.

The Warner Brothers' production has out Disney'd Disney. The feel of this direction does to Wonka what Disney did to Mary Poppins (you never read the books where she'd pull off a finger for a snack?). Orphan Annie lived a Dickensian life before being "rescued" by an arms dealer and regularly had to be rescued by an mysterious mystic - not a kick line! Maybe a Dahl-based musical should be more like The Demon Barber?

Chalamet joins the likes of Lee Marvin and Rex Harrison of male leads who can't sing, but bravely soldier on. Too bad the studios don't have a male Marni Nixon to fill in. At least the tunes are forgettable (when not pulled from the Gene Wilder version).

What do the Wizard of Oz, The Lord of the Rings, Rebel Moon and virtually every saga ever put on a screen? You know the answer.

The plucky but reluctant hero collects fellow adventurers like the underside of my bed collects dust bunnies.

No trope is left unemployed. The backstory of trying to leave a violent past and live a pastoral life until danger comes to call. The rascal who Hans Soloes from a morally ambiguous opportunist into a heroic leader (or does he?). The jackbooted, self indulgent, sadist, willing to destroy a planet to make a point. The utter disregard for physics and the fact that in space you can't hear rockets and things going boom! Oh, yes, there's the Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven/The Three Amigos plot of a poor village needed warriors to defend it. Oh, and a hot Asian woman with swords.

But it does have Anthony Hopkins as a robot's voice. So it has that going for it.